Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Rule number one: Expect the
unexpected when reading a Tana French novel.

I read French's previous novel,
Faithful Place, over a day or two of lounging in a lawn chair, a glass of
chilled chardonnay close at hand, on a sunny porch on Martha's Vineyard. A week
on an island with only your best friend for company is a rare thing when you
have three small children, a house, a husband, several jobs, and many, many
animals back in black fly-infested New Hampshire. I took full advantage by
saving Faithful Place for that week. And it didn't disappoint.

Broken Harbor was a very
different kind of reading experience. I read much of French's fourth
installment of her series of psychological thrillers in three-minute bursts
while I waited for the coffee shop guy to hand me a breakfast sandwich through
my car window. I read some of it on the bathroom floor, shielding the book from
my boys splashing behind me in their nightly tub. Yes, there was chardonnay,
but not soothingly sipped beachside; instead, I gulped at the kitchen counter
while I cooked and read, trying not to get tomato sauce on the pages. I
finished the book while my boys were distracted by a Power Rangers movie. Now
I'm writing this while we play hide and seek. I'm the seeker. It takes me a
very long time to find them. They're used to it.

Broken Harbor was different
for other reasons, beyond the cry of gulls and the sweet gift of time. For the
first hundred pages or so, I was interested and engaged, but not quite charmed. Her other novels had charmed from page one. Charm is nothing but sprinkles on
top; and yet, I was still sucked into the story in a way that's rare for me in these
days of distraction.

The writing in Broken Harbor
is deft, crisp, engaged, excellent. Detective Sergeant Mick Kennedy of the
Dublin murder squad has been assigned a case that “should have ended up in the
textbooks as a shining example of how to get everything right.” And for those
first hundred pages, everything does go right, at least as right as it can
after the Spain family of four is found in their home, three of them dead and
the mother barely alive. Kennedy and his rookie partner, Richie Curran ask
their questions, make their observations, follow the steps they trust will lead
them toward resolution and justice.

But then we meet Mick's sister,
Dina, haunted by her own head and reliant on Mick to provide the steady shore
for her tumultuous inner seas. A-ha. Complexity. This is what makes French's
characters great: they are never all good or all bad. There's no such thing as
pure evil and pure benevolence. There are only slushy mixtures of
doing-your-best, trying-to-survive, and desperate-as-hell.

Rule number two: when you
think you've figured out what the unexpected might be, you're still wrong.

Watch as the case in Broken Harbor starts to reveal its
spreading seams:

When I think about the Spain case, from deep inside endless
nights, this is the moment I remember. Everything else, every other slip and
stumble along the way, could have been redeemed. Cold still air, a weak ray of
sun glowing on the wall outside the window, smell of stale bread and apples. I
knew Richie was lying to me. He had seen something, heard something, fitted a
piece into place and caught a glimpse of some brand-new picture. It was my job
to keep pushing until he came clean. I understand that; I understood it then,
in that low-ceilinged flat with the dust prickling my hands and clogging the
air, I understood – or I would have, if I had pulled myself together, through
the fatigue and all the other things that are no excuse – that Richie was my responsibility.

Mick struggles under the
stressful triumvirate of his sister, his wobbly partner, and his case, which
happens to have occurred in the same town as the tragedy that defined his
family so long ago. The town, once a seaside escape for lucky families, has
been developed into a village of shoddily-built houses sold out of shiny
catalogues to people who owe far more than the houses are worth, who have no
recourse now that the developers have fled without finishing. For a little
while he flirts with boundaries he's never crossed before and I worry for him. I worry he'll make irrevocable mistakes. I worry his sister will both disappear
and keep showing up. I worry his partner will break the kind of rule that lies
like glue between partners.

And I am charmed. This book
took longer for me to love – maybe because of the way long bits of remembered
dialogue are reported impossibly verbatim, or maybe because Mick's
righteousness comes across as less wisdom than ego – but French's signature
blend of contextual insight and succinct characterization saved the book from
being not just a well-written suspense novel but an amazing novel that makes
you question, and wonder, and flinch. Charming.

I'd like to read her next
book someplace different. Maybe on a cruise ship. Or in a snowed-in cabin where
the fire has to be stirred every hour so we don't freeze, a rum cider at my
side instead of chardonnay. But I'm not picky. French's novels are reason to
celebrate with whatever drink at hand.

Andi Diehn is a freelance
writer from rural New Hampshire. She has an M.F.A. from Vermont College and has
published dozens of short stories and essays.She shares a blog at www.letusgothen.net

The Quivering Pen

The Quivering Pen's motto can be summed up in two words: Book Evangelism. The blog is written and curated by David Abrams, author of the novels Brave Deeds (Grove/ Atlantic, 2017) and Fobbit (Grove/ Atlantic, 2012), from his home office in Butte, Montana. It is fueled by early-morning cups of coffee, the occasional bowl of Cheez-Its, and a lifelong love of good books.